Faith in science vs. faith in religion.

[Michael]

A mere diversionary tactic on your part .. not interested ..

No, it's not a diversionary tactic. I think it would be a *riot* to watch you two try to debate astronomy and MDR theory. It would be *highly* entertaining and you'd both learn something, if only something about each other.

 

[SelfSim]

I would assert that the mere existence of every planet and every sun in the universe is evidence of gravity, not to mention their relative motions.

Sure .. define what you mean by 'existence'. After all .. I have (and included lots of objective evidence supporting that definition).

Not all planets even have life forms, but they all experience gravity as the huygen's probe, and the mars landers clearly demonstrate and verified without a human mind ever touching the surface.

My dear Michael .. those probes were designed by human minds! And they carry telemetry and sensors designed to produce information which our minds can interpret. They followed trajectories predicted in advance by our mind's models used in describing our physics of 'gravity'.

No evidence of anything mind independence in any of that ..

That's funny. Let me toss that right back at you and point out that regardless of what you believe, your "faith" that gravity is not independent of the human mind is badly misplaced.

Well, what's even funnier is that I (and the MDR hypothesis) never ruled out that gravity might be independent of human minds!
Read it again .. here it is in its first form, and again in its revised form. There's no faith in any of it .. its a testable hypothesis!

Even if no life forms occured on this planet, this planet would still exist thanks to gravity, as would our sun, and every planet in our solar system.

I notice you freely using the words: 'planet', 'sun' and 'solar system' (and 'exist') to make your point .. Ever stopped to contemplate where the meanings of those words came from? Did the meaning of those words even 'exist' before human minds invented them? Can you demonstrate the objective test which shows they did? The only way I can even contemplate the existence of those things in the first place is if they have that meaning. Without it, I wouldn't even have a clue about what you were talking about.
If there is no test which demonstrates that such meaning exists independently from our minds, then there we have it yet again .. evidence of mind dependence ... and not evidence of anything independent of a human mind.

I'm quite sure that there are *many* solar systems with no life forms in them at all, yet they have suns and planets none the less. Our moon experiences gravity at pretty much the expected amount as we verified when humans landed and walked on the moon.

Sure ... no disagreement there. The model you describe is objectively testable also. The model can also be tested for its dependence on a mind .. and it passes that test with flying colors because you, (a mind), are personally 'quite sure that there are *many* solar systems ..' (etc) ... more evidence of a mind model depicting what is real. No evidence of mind independence in that!

Somewhere in there you *must* accept these basis premises, otherwise cosmology theory and astronomy as a whole are pretty much irrelevant.

Certainly not irrelevant! Those models are highly useful .. they predict, and their predictions are objectively testable. The outcomes of those tests then form the basis of science's objective reality.
There's no way I could ever call that 'irrelevant'!?!

 

[SelfSim]

Here's another way of explaining why Michael's scenario:
'Even if no life forms occured on this planet, this planet would still exist thanks to gravity, as would our sun, and every planet in our solar system'
... is still mind dependent.

Take another example .. the old conundrum of: 'If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?' The answer is of course, it does .. because what we mean by a tree, doing what we mean by falling in a woods, does what we mean by making sound. The mind dependence of all of that could not possibly be more obvious .. its a hypothetical tree for goodness sake!

Just like the falling tree in the woods, Michael's above scenario is also hypothetical.

But of course, that won't make sense to Michael because mind independent reality believers don't think their beliefs about hypothetical future or past things, are about hypothetical things, even though that's the meaning of 'hypothetical'. Such is the nature of belief ... it generates blind spots to scientific thought.

 

[Michael]

Your entire claim is a non sequitur fallacy.

MDR theory essentially claims that "Since human words to describe nature all come from a human mind, nothing can exist in nature that is independent of the human mind." It's a non sequitur fallacy from the start.

 

[SelfSim]

Your entire claim is a non sequitur fallacy.

MDR theory essentially claims that "Since human words to describe nature all come from a human mind, nothing can exist in nature that is independent of the human mind." It's a non sequitur fallacy from the start.

No .. not at all.

The MDR hypothesis explictly doesn't rule out the possibility that your 'nature' might be 'reality', and thus its conclusions still contain uncertainty (ie: no 'true' or 'false'). Its a testable scientific hypothesis and not a pure logic ('true/false') argument. From post#367:

3. mind-dependent reality in no way suggests that there is nothing "out there" other than minds, or that what is "out there" is not reality, that's merely a misunderstanding of the MDR concept. Instead, mind-dependent reality means that when we do talk about what is "out there", and we do call it "reality", we are using our minds to do that, and we have no need to claim we are not using our minds, or that what we refer to as being "out there" is in any way independent of our minds. Scientists can often be seen to talk about what is "out there", outside their minds, as well as what is "in there", inside their minds, and as scientists do that, they can be seen to be using their minds in fundamentally important ways, that could be done very differently, by the very different minds we already observe around us.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Faith is faith, no matter where it arises.

There is human faith and then there is God's Divine faith.

 

[Noxot]

I would say that a persons lack of proper faith in science might point to a lack of proper faith in God. is not faith the very being and relation you have and function in concerning something?

the western ideas of Gods nature probably influenced the idea that the laws of physics are constant. if Buddhism had more of an influence in science then it might be more accepted that the laws can or do change.

some of the people concerned with science share many qualities with the despised dominators in religion. going against the mainstream won't get you burnt at the stake in the science realm but it could ruin your career and end all funding. the science community is a social construct. it's a kind of tribe. sometimes only the famous guys might be able to get away with saying certain things.

the more things change the more they stay the same.

in religion there were right reasons for going against the heretics. in mainstream science there are right reasons why they go against things such as ID. errors in heterodoxy does not mean that the heretics were always wrong. truths in orthodoxy does not mean they are final or complete.

what does orthodoxy have to do with the truth? one thing about orthodoxy is that it has to do with conservative values which concern certain personality aspects in people. I guess orthodoxy might also have to do with conformity to authority or the status quo. it probably concerns itself more with the familiar and the known.

what does heterodoxy have to do with the truth? one thing about heterodoxy is that it has to do with liberal values which concern certain personality aspects in people. I guess heterodoxy might also have to do with rebellion against authority or the status quo. it probably concerns itself more with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

both have their pros and cons and both have been useful to humanity.